If you’ve been looking for a projector that you can use to highlight your sales pitch to potential customers, or to present reports to managements, it's likely that you've encountered a dizzying array of features, acronyms, and options that make choosing your ideal projector a bewildering experience. Most quality projectors don’t come cheap, and making a mistake in deciding could result in either wasting a lot of money, or getting stuck with the wrong projector for many years to come. In this article we make this task much easier by outlining the key factors to consider in making this important decision.

• Room lighting – Whereas a dark room is usually preferred, in most business settings some lights need to be on in order to take notes and audience interaction. The more lights that need to be turned on, the brighter the projector you’ll need.
• Room size – In a large room with many people, the image needs to be larger and the projector further from the screen. The larger the room and image, the brighter the projector needs to be.
• Usage – Projectors used for training and working groups, where much detail needs to be seen, need to be brighter than those used for graphics and video, which are more likely to be seen in a dark room.
• Projection Screen – A high-quality projection screen provides substantial light reflection, enhancing even a low-brightness projector’s image.  

 Brightness is measured in lumens: the brighter the projector, the higher the lumen rating. Projectors today can be classified according to the following classes:

• Up to 1,000 lumens - The lowest light-output projectors are usually the least expensive. Depending on your needs, projectors in this brightness class may be suitable for your budget and application. This may require you to present in a dark or dimly lit room.
• 1,000 - 2,000 lumens – Projectors in this brightness class are suitable for typical business conference rooms and classrooms. Though reduced lighting is recommended for best viewing, a totally dark room is usually not necessary.
• 2000 - 3000 lumens – Projectors in this class are considered to be high-performance, and are suitable for large conference rooms and classrooms. They also allow more lights to be turned on without the image being washed out.
• More than 3000 lumens - These ultra-bright projectors offer highest performance and are usually fairly expensive. They are used for high-end applications in very large rooms under almost normal room lighting conditions.

Resolution - Resolution determines how sharp and clear a projector’s image is, and it is determined by the number of pixels the projector uses to create the image. The more pixels on the screen, the higher its resolution, and the higher the price of the projector.   Higher-resolution projectors are able to show a “sharper” picture, providing more image detail. In today’s market, the choices for resolution are the following:

• SVGA – This class provides resolutions of up to 800 x 600 pixels, and is very popular today because of their fairly low prices and adequate image quality. These provide an appropriate level of performance for most PowerPoint-type presentation applications.
• XGA - Projectors in the XGA class provide resolutions of up to 1,024 x 768 pixels andare generally more expensive, though due to the increased popularity of XGA-resolution computers they have become just as popular as SVGA projectors.  For detailed numeric data such as large Excel spreadsheets, this resolution is preferred.
• SXGA – These projectors provide resolutions of up to 1,280 x 1,024 pixels, and much more expensive than XGA products. These projectors are usually needed in high-end engineering applications, and are not very common in most business scenarios.